Posts tagged NAI Global Executives

NAI Global is about to unveil our 25th annual Global Market Report, a comprehensive review of more than 215 commercial real estate markets around the world, complete with economic forecasts and current rates and trends.

The report will be available as a PDF starting next week, so stay tuned!

Canadian real estate developers and investors have always participated in the U.S. real estate market. Generally, though it has being either the very largest developers like Brookfield Properties’ investments in New York or Brookfield Asset Management’s large investment in General Growth Properties. Or it’s the more entrepreneurial investor targeting the border cities like Seattle and Buffalo or the snowbirds looking for residential real estate in Arizona and Florida. But that has changed during 2010! More >

If you were to look at the vacancy rates for CBD office space, retail space or even industrial, in any given market, you might be discouraged. You will find tenants working hard to maintain the space they currently occupy, extending and blending their leases in this tenants’ market. You will see property owners making hard choices about which properties are performing or underperforming, which to keep as investments and which to sell. The picture may look bleak. But if you look deeper, there is hope.

Transaction volume is on the rise. Sure, the largest properties aren’t moving yet, but brokers are working with clients across the U.S. who are taking additional space, moving headquarters, purchasing industrial production/distribution facilities. And the pace is increasing.

The recession rocked the industry to its core fundamentals, and it will take another few years before we see anything close to the transaction volume we witnessed in 2005-2007. But as investors come off the sideline, cap and interest rates stabilize, jobs come back, and consumer demand picks up, the commercial real estate market worldwide is starting to heal.

I am often travelling to large Russian regional cities where we manage office properties and shopping centers, and I always feel how different these markets are in comparison to the Russian capital. Because they are much smaller than Moscow, they are often disregarded by foreign investors and developers. More >